Learning about “Half”: Critical Aspects and Pedagogical Strategies in Designed Preschool Activities

This is an empirical study concerning children’s development of conceptual understanding and their early mathematics learning. The intention is to broaden the understanding of pre-school children’s perceptions of the concept of ‘half’ (as in 1 of 2 equal parts of a whole) in adapted mathematics lessons. Specifically, this study investigates (1) how pre-school children experience this concept, and (2) what facilitates the children’s development of conceptual understanding.

Observations of pedagogical strategies and the children’s responses revealed that children experience concepts as being qualitatively different and that the different experiences are critical in terms of how the learning object is perceived, and in terms of how the dimensions of the learning object relate to each other. Collectively, these results indicate a hierarchical organisation of how the aspects of the concept of ‘half’ are perceived by the children.

The study was based on The Variation Theory of Learning (VT), a theory that focuses attention on the learning object and conceptualises what is possible to learn in any given situation.

The study is empirical and designed as an iterative intervention study in which teachers would discuss their practice with the researchers after a teaching session (‘learning sessions’). The article studies two learning sessions. The learning sessions were recorded on video and qualitatively evaluated together with individual teachers and in groups.

Björklund, C. (2018). «Learning about “Half”: Critical Aspects and Pedagogical Strategies in Designed Preschool Activities». Scandinavian Journal of Educational Research, 62(2):245-263.